Re: [PATCH] tpm: ibmvtpm: Make use of dma_alloc_coherent()

From: Jason Gunthorpe
Date: Tue Oct 12 2021 - 11:43:29 EST


On Tue, Oct 12, 2021 at 06:29:58PM +0300, Jarkko Sakkinen wrote:
> On Mon, 2021-10-11 at 00:01 +0800, Cai Huoqing wrote:
> > Replacing kmalloc/kfree/get_zeroed_page/free_page/dma_map_single/
> ~~~~~~~~~
> Replace
>
> > dma_unmap_single() with dma_alloc_coherent/dma_free_coherent()
> > helps to reduce code size, and simplify the code, and coherent
> > DMA will not clear the cache every time.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Cai Huoqing <caihuoqing@xxxxxxxxx>
>
> If this does not do functionally anything useful, there's no
> reason to apply this.

At least in this case it looks like the ibmvtpm is not using the DMA
API properly. There is no sync after each data transfer. Replacing
this wrong usage with the coherent API is reasonable.

Jason